Calliope
Calliope, also known by her chathandle , is a female cherub playing a session of the game. While she initially gave the impression that she was a troll, this was due to her obsession with their species, which extended to cosplaying as one. She appears to find comfort in pretending that she is not a cherub. Her concealing her true species also could have been related to her (possibly) not being allowed to name her species due to the . She has , though of a different shade of green than what is shown on the troll hemospectrum. Biography Calliope and her brother Caliborn . Calliope explains to Roxy that when she hears or reads her "brother's" name she will fall asleep and he will wake up and that the same goes for him should he hear or read her name. Interestingly, her "brother" managed to somehow write her name in one of his unpleasant notes, presumably without waking her up. As they do switch, Calliope makes sure to shackle her other leg with the shackle bearing her symbol, one that she can only unlock, while the shackle bearing Caliborn's symbol can only be unlocked by him. They perform this switch in their bed, which is not a bed but a Sarswapagus. She wears a dark green tailcoat (which bears her symbol) and trousers, a black shirt and a red bowtie. Her sleeves feature bright red 6-and-9 cufflinks, probably halves of the Cancer sign à la Sign of the Signless, as has been seen on other characters (Aranea and Neophyte Redglare, for instance). One of her ankles has a shackle bearing Caliborn's symbol. When she cosplays as Callie Ohpeee, she additionally wears a white hairpiece, grey facepaint and gloves, and a headband with corkscrew-shaped horns which recall her symbol. and the outfit resembles the green jacket and red bowtie of Whistles the Clown, a character from "Whistles," one of Hussie's earlier works. She wields a wand that has duality as a pistol, similar to 's staff/AK rifle (Calliope that her brother's favored weapon was a little heavy handed). She and her "brother" share a Sylladex featuring the Juju Fetch Modus, which operates such that whatever one 'sibling' captchalogues is only retrievable by the other. This is reminiscent of Bughouse, a game related to chess where two chess games are going on simultaneously and the pieces captured are passed to partner playing on the other board to be reentered into play. And as we know, Caliborn likes games and Homestuck likes chess. Name The name Calliope comes from the Greek muse of epic poetry, which gives her the title "Muse of Space". The muse also gave her name to a musical instrument similar to an organ, often played at circuses. Furthering the theme of muses, Urania was the Greek muse of astronomy, while Uranus was the primal Greek god personifying the sky; thus, William Herschel named the planet that he and his sister discovered after Uranus. Also, it could be a subtle reference to the Adobe program Adobe Muse since Andrew Hussie is known to use Adobe products, it's called Muse, and the Adobe Muse icon is lime colored like Calliope's blood. Calliope chose uranianUmbra as her online handle due to her fascination with the planet Uranus's unique rotation, though when explaining this to Roxy, she is unable to remember the word for a ball's topspin – in pool, the term for putting spin on the cue ball is "english". Umbra is Latin for "shadow" (whence we get 'umbrage', meaning anger); in English, it can mean the same, but usually refers specifically to the darkest part of a shadow. 'UU' also completes the DNA motif of all the other chumhandles/trolltags, representing uracil. The symbol of Uranus is often seen as another gender symbol, specifically, one that is a sort of female in a male body. Though Calliope is not technically in a male body, the body later on belongs to her male counterpart, Caliborn, permanently, thus being a male body. The name Calliope is also a reference the novel Middlesex where the intersex protagonist uses the name "Cal" to represent their masculine side and "Calliope" or Callie to represent the feminine side of them. Calliope is also an off-handed reference to Andrew Hussie's discontinued graphic novel, Whistles Volume One: The Starlight Calliope; a frightening tale of a circus clown and his misadventures in a sadistic circus underground, where genocide, prostitution, and cannibalism against clowns takes place. In the Homestuck fandom there has been some dispute about how "Calliope" is pronounced. Although Andrew Hussie that he doesn't care how readers pronounce things in Homestuck, in Greek mythology, Calliope's name is pronounced (kuh-'lie'-uh-pee). Symbol Calliope's symbol is seen to be a cross between the caduceus (☤), symbol of the Greek god Hermes, and the rod of Asclepius (which is otherwise known as the asklepion), the latter of which being one of the two Ophiuchus symbols. By contrast, Caliborn's chat symbol is the other, less common Ophiuchus symbol. Aside from being the messenger of the gods, Hermes was also the guardian of boundaries and the travelers who cross them. Asclepius, on the other hand, was a healer in Greek mythology. When he died, he became the constellation Ophiuchus. In North America, the caduceus and asklepion are often confused for one another, where the former is used to symbolize the medical profession, while it is used to represent commerce elsewhere. While Calliope uses this symbol, Caliborn uses the Japanese-preferred symbol for Ophiuchus which is a tilde superimposed over the letter U, a stylized symbol of a man holding a snake. The tilde also resembles Calliope's fake horns, each of which in turn resembles one of the entwined snakes. Her sign also may be two adult cherubs mating, as adult cherubs turn into serpents while mating. Even further, her symbol could be interpreted simply as a caduceus without the wings, similar to how Caliborn predominated before their body could develop wings. History After losing his mating battle, Calliope's father searched for a dying star for him to lay his egg. Finding a super massive, red giant star, he laid his egg on the desolate, future Earth that orbited the star. Calliope and Caliborn hatched from the egg in a larval form where they cohabited their shared body simultaneously. After they pupated from their larval form and began to vacillate between control of their body, Gamzee Makara began taking care of them. For unknown reasons Gamzee eventually chained Calliope and Caliborn up in a room in a veil meteor from his session and supplied them with food and objects for entertainment. Calliope first appeared at the end of the ACT 6}} flash. At the end of the flash, a terminal with a caduceus symbol can be seen, which also serves as her symbol. shows a pair of troll-like hands (later shown to be gloves), and the screen displays Alternian text that reads "Click > to continue". The terminal appears similar to the Computer Terminals used by Exiles, except with only one screen. Later on we see Calliope typing from that terminal. She claims that the terminal allows her to view the post-scratch Homestuck Kids until a point in their session when Roxy blacks it out entirely. However, she suggests that she can still communicate through text. Her session of the game is separate from all four known sessions (the kids and trolls' pre-scratch and post-scratch sessions). It is possible that she is from the universe the post-scratch kids are supposed to create, or else from the post-scratch Earth in the future; the planet she is from is shown to be Earth, which was from its native solar system to a larger red star. She is not able to travel very far outside of the entrance hatch to her room due to the chain around her ankle. She appears to dwell on the trolls' crashed , embedded into the ground of an unknown planet covered in numerous copies of the Statue of Liberty with shitty JPEG artifacts. Outside, a massive red supergiant can be seen which is dangerously close to collapsing. In her session, she is a Muse of Space. She has mentioned to Jane that she has dreamt on Prospit all her life, an ability that thus far has only been possessed by two other players, both Heroes of Space themselves. The Muse class is an exceedingly rare, powerful passive class only assigned to females. At some point she came into the possession of that compiles knowledge Rose knows about Sburb and the kids' and trolls' situation, although Gamzee has edited out all information relating to , and himself. Calliope is supplying this information to the B2 kids, thus fulfilling At the end of Act 6.3, Caliborn's personality seemed to permanently take over. In Openbound, Aranea speculates that Calliope died that day and that her spirit presumably now roams somewhere in the Furthest Ring. She expresses the desire to find her before Caliborn does and stop him from finishing her off. Later on she appears to Roxy in a dream bubble in the form of Twinkly Herbert and starts leading her to a where they won't be seen or heard by Caliborn. Because her soul's true form features completely black eyes and is thus , she assumes the form of Callie Ohpeee in order to meet Roxy. She explains that, contrary to what Aranea and the other ghosts believe, she does not possess any knowledge or ability that could be used to defeat . However, she believes that there may be someone who does: a version of herself from a doomed timeline where she predominated over Caliborn and played the game instead. She is then last seen alone on the spiral before Jade Harley dies and appears, along with a curious stage. Calliope changes to her Trollsona, and the two of them begin to talk and become friendly with each other. Calliope helps Jade make a trollsona, and they both use the stage as a way to show each other their respective pasts. As Jade begins to remember, it is revealed that she is from a timeline where John and Davesprite were killed by Typheus early into the three year journey through the Furthest Ring, and she recalls meeting another version of Calliope near the end of her trip, one who had defeated Caliborn and achieved god tier status before eventually dying. Jade writes the stories this doomed Calliope told her in Calliope's ~ATH book, as Calliope illustrates. One of these stories addressed the current parallel events in the comic, where John met his denizen and completed his planet quest. After an unspecified amount of time, Jane walks along the yellow spiral and meets Calliope in person for the first time, as well as Jade. After an initial misunderstanding, believing the two of them are actual trolls, she asks to make a trollsona as well. Personality Calliope has a very polite, cheerful and friendly demeanor, she tries to be helpful where she can although she is cautious about revealing too much information about herself due to her situation. She seems to be quite creative and is a writer and a talented artist. Similar to how the trolls were based on common internet archetypes, Calliope is based on the MS Paint Adventures fandom; Andrew Hussie has referred to her as the obnoxious fandom avatar character. She spends a large part of her time writing fanfiction and drawing fanart of the other homestuck characters, and self-inserting her trollsona, Callie Ohpeee, whose name is made to fit trolls' 6-letter names (which mirrors Vriska's spidersona in Alterniabound), into the stories. She often seems to think of her friends as characters in a story rather than actual people, and seems to live vicariously through her imagined adventures with them. She also has a thing for wild speculations about the story, making up crazy out of every , often ending up . Her self esteem is quite low and she considers herself ugly, wishing to be more like humans and trolls, and especially feeling jealous of their ability to experience flushed romance (since she, as a cherub, can only have caliginous feelings). Her usually cheery mood can become defeatist and sometimes cranky when faced with problems, especially those relating to Caliborn, but she usually stays quite polite even when in a bad mood. Calliope generally uses British English. This ties in with her lime blood, since "limey" is a common slang term for British people. In addition, the alternate spelling of some words (e.g. armor; armour, color; colour) lends itself to a higher instance of the letter "u" than in American English. It also ties in to her resemblance to Lord "English". It should be noted that she doesn't always use British spelling where it wouldn't result in an extra "u": for instance she uses " ", " ", " ", " ", " ", " " and " " (as a verb), instead of normal British "manoeuvre", "haemo-", "fulfil", "fulfilment", "learnt", "programme" and "practise". Her use of British slang without being from the country of origin could even be a reference to Doctor Who, as the title character commonly uses a similar accent even when not from the planet it is from. If this were true, it would be another relation between the series and cherubs, considering Caliborn's "Lord of Time" title. Taken from another view, her British English could be a subtle jab at the prominence of Anglophilia in the fandom. Relationships To Caliborn In her conversation with Dirk she talks about her "brother" who is supposed to be her client player, although she has offered to be his client instead. She stresses that he is not her brother in the sense that humans would understand it and they do not even have the same blood color - although they still have genetic similarity. Calliope's dream self was killed by Caliborn. He promised not to kill her if Dirk plays a " " with him, however in a " " he revealed that he had their session's Jack Noir kill Calliope before said game (at least from his temporal perspective). To the post-scratch kids She could possibly be considered the patron of all the post-scratch kids. Dirk explains to Jake that the chat client, allowing him and Roxy to communicate with Jake and Jane, was given to him by an " " in conversation. This more than likely implies that Calliope is the one who sent it to them, and that she did so as a means to set up the foundation for their session. She later admits to Dirk that she is a fan of their story and near obsessed with them. She also admits to having written fan fiction about them, including fan fiction of the romantic kind. Calliope seems very friendly and cordial toward Jane and Jake, offering constructive advice about their session. However, due to the rules of hers and Caliborn's game, can be extraordinarily cagey when referring to personal details about herself. She is like this with Dirk and Roxy, but not shown to as much of an extent. She seems very fond of Roxy, and even confides in her during the final moments of her visibility into Roxy's session. Calliope reveals to Roxy her name, title, and race, and even gives her some fan art of a Trickster Roxy. She also admits to Roxy how beautiful she finds both the human and troll races, and how insecure she is about her own appearance, even going so far as to say that no one would even kiss her as a means of revival as a result. She seems taken aback by the notion of a flushed relationship, due to her race's standpoint on the matter, but does not seem to object much to pale relationships. This is shown during this very same interaction with Roxy. With Calmasis Post-scratch Rose wrote a book which seems to reference events involving Calliope and Caliborn and stars a character named Calmasis, who seems to be representative of them both. This would tie in well with Calmasis' androgynous nature. The cover of the book also features Calliope's associated symbol and Calliope's outfit is nearly identical to Calmasis', with the dark green suit and red bow tie. Calliope also wears a wig that matches Calmasis' snow-white hair, furthering the link between them. As Calmasis seemingly represents both Calliope and Caliborn, it is unclear which one is the antihero and which the antagonist. Calliope and Caliborn are seen playing a game of chess, Caliborn had created tiny caps for his king and queen in order to hide one as the other after convincing Calliope to let him swap his king and queen's starting positions and thus fool her into believing he had swapped them while actually leaving them in their normal starting position. In the book Calmasis engages Zazzerpan in a game of chess, which closely parallels the game of chess between Calliope and Caliborn. However, during their chess game, it was in fact Caliborn who plays the role of Calmasis, and Calliope who emulated Zazzerpan. Andrew Hussie was seen dressed in with Calliope's sign, horns, and gray face paint, later is was shown that Calliope's troll-like appearance was also a costume, meaning details of Hussie's cosplay such as fake horns and fake grey skin were in fact accurate as it was cosplay of a cosplay. Calmasis was also displaying both Calliope's and Caliborn's chat symbols, set against a lime green and cherry red background representing Calliope's and Caliborn's blood colors. When Calliope was revealed, she was shown with a shackle bearing Caliborn's symbol. The jagged two-colour split background style seen on that page is one which is normally associated with conflict – for instance, between , or and Hussie}} – which reinforces the tension between Calliope and Caliborn. The colors are also similar to those on the Sburb Beta and Sburb Alpha symbols. Trivia *Although Calliope and Caliborn's birthday and age are not mentioned in canon, Hussie has stated that it would make sense that their birthday is 11/11 and that they are eleven "units" old. *During the revelation of Calliope's name, Roxy's drunken slur of her name, lined up with her correction in the very next line of text, puts the letters "lil" and "cal" together vertically. This further ties Calliope with , as Lil' Cal is his ectobiological "grandfather" of sorts. ** Her shipping habits may also be a reference to the cherub Cupid who causes people to fall in love. * of Calliope's conversations with Jane is an antithesis of Karkat's with Jade (as well as the between Kanaya and Aradia). *Calliope, Caliborn, and Karkat have all sworn off "hemotyping" and use custom grays which differ slightly from the more common RGB-defined grays. In the hex code of Calliope's color, the 6's from Karkat's color are replaced by 9's (#626262 becomes #929292); Karkat's symbol is an inverted 69. **92 is the atomic number of uranium. Uranium is naturally silvery grey, but in some forms appears bright green, similar to the two colors of Calliope's chat symbol and also tying with Calliope being a limeblood. **This also ties her in with Jade, as both are space players who are assosciated with uranium. This also makes a connection to Becquerel, who happens to be a First Guardian like . **Karkat Vantas' typing color is directly in between that of Calliope and Caliborn's. *Calliope's chat client begins and ends with cheering, which is different from Pesterchum, Trollian, and Bettybother which begin and cease with pestering, trolling, and bothering, respectively. **Caliborn's swaps cheering for jeering. * Calliope's fake horns look quite similar to the horns in the poster to the right in . Oddly enough, the poster immediately left of that depicts a clown with horns that curve identically on both sides, resembling a "U" shape as a result. ** This could be complete coincidence, but knowing Hussie, it's unlikely. In the event that he planned this bit of imagery, it's worth noting that the image on the right is "The Ringmaster" of Juggalo mythos, and the one on the left is "The Carnival of Carnage." The former is the Dark Carnival's judge of souls, and the latter is a carnival in which cyclical punishment for wrong-doing is doled out. *In , part of the artwork for coloUrs and mayhem: Universe B is one of her drawings. *All of Calliope's in-universe artwork is drawn by . * , which she describes as; "a drawing of nothing in particular. Nothing you understand, at least", resembles the Red Giant Sun . *The closeup of Calliope's and Caliborn's eyes are the same image as the closeup of Lil' Cal's eyes, albeit different colors. *Unlike other ghosts, Calliope's body has completely black eyes compared to white eyes of others. Her troll disguise however has white. This may be unique to cherub ghosts. *Even though they share a body, Calliope's tongue is while Caliborn's is . **Calliope's weapon is also while Caliborn's is , another reference to the yin-yang theme. *Calliope has joined the growing list of characters to reference . ru:Каллиопа Category:Cherubs Category:Homestuck Protagonists/Allies